Fwd: Re: Response to Re: SURVIVOR

[Doug Millison]

This was posted to PSYARTS today.

>Delivered-To: millison at dnai.com
>X-Accept-Language: en
>Approved-By:  Norman Holland <nholland at UFL.EDU>
>Date:         Thu, 21 Sep 2000 17:06:38 -0400
>Reply-To: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>               <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
>Sender: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>               <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
>From: Norman Holland <nholland at ufl.edu>
>Subject:      Re: Response to Re: SURVIVOR
>To: PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU
>Status:  U
>
>From:
>         Patrick McCord <mccord at parallel.park.uga.edu>
>
>Wed 10:34 PM
>
>
>I don't know what Jimmy Phelan said, but ...
>
>Closure is one of the base Gestalt properties of percetual organization
>and subsequent memory and categorization activities (along with good
>continuation, similarity, and proximity).  While Gestalt theory isn't
>adequate to explaining all of cognition, it's a good base for
>understanding the perceptual drive (excuse me, hardcore psychoanalyists)
>to break sensation into useful bits of information and then organize the
>bits into associative networks.  One such network is a script schema,
>which can be a simple procedure, tying a shoelace, or devilshly complex
>series of events, the Plot of ULYSSES or GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. The closure
>figure we recognize in tying a lace is that our shoe is secure (actually
>it's probably the motor kinesthesia of pulling the bows taut).  The
>closures invoked in the following the scripts of the other two are less
>obvious and deeply overdetermined requiring a knowledge of much of Western
>lit. and some understanding of th esecond law of thermodynamics.
>
>  The ten little Indians plot, however, is made up of a limited number of
>variables, obvious causalities, predictable (or atleast explicable)
>motivations, and an enclosed setting.  The fun of such plots is in
>exercizing our inferences and predictions against what then eventuates.
>Closure is not just a trope, but, along with good continutation, the
>fundamental process by which we understand such scripts (which offer
>"solvable" plots).
>
>Whereas with Joyce or Pynchon, the fun is more in detecting and being
>surprised by similarities and prxomities as the works play with language,
>reference, history, and the more subtle nuances of the
>text-as-interperable-object game, in which the plot offers no single
>solutions, but lots of connections, implications, innuendoes, and
>Slothrups wanderng around Europe.
>
>those of us who teach know the singular problem in getting students raised
>on a steady diet of tv-style causal-closed plots interested in playing
>with texts that overdetermine or leave dangling implicatons in their
>endings. Our students experience what must be a mild, but very
>uncomfortable stress when reading such stories because they are so
>unskilled and untrained in consciously recognizing----and playing with---
>these kinds of script patternings.  The ultimate cultural-political
>implications of such a population--addicted it seems to "Reality TV" with
>it's millionaire closures (Reaganomics writ surreal?)...
>
>
>                       Patrick Thomas McCord
>English Department, Park Hall               194 Sunny Hills Drive
>University of Georgia                       Athens, GA   30601
>Athens, GA      30602                       706.353.0568
>
>"I've been asked if I ever get the DTs.  I don't know; it's hard to tell
>  where Hollywood ends and the DTs begin."
>
>  - actor W.C. Fields
>
>On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Norman Holland wrote:
>
>: From:
>:         "John V. Knapp" <tb0jvk1 at corn.cso.niu.edu>
>:
>: Mon 6:42 PM
>:
>:
>: Dear HRG --
>:
>: James Phelan, in *Reading People Reading Plots,* (U. of Chicago P, 1989)
>: discusses the differences between "completeness" and "closure" in narative
>: endings.
>:
>: JVK
>: ****************
>: On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Norman Holland wrote:
>:
>: > From:
>: >         HrgSmes at aol.com
>: >
>: > Sun 7:24 PM
>: >
>: > For an article about SURVIVOR, several questions:
>: >
>: > The 'ten little indians' scenario -- and pardon my unPCness here 
>-- seems to
>: > be a narrative device that has existed forever.
>: >
>: cut ...
>: > 2. Can you give some psychodynamic analytic explanations for 
>this recurrent
>: > piece of business. "Closure satisfaction" comes to mind -- used in
>explaining
>: > detective fiction. Ive cited this in a previous paper on THE 
>MALTESE FALCON,
>: > but cannot remember where the term comes from. ?Psychology  ?Narratology
>By
>: > the by, what is the proper term for the study of narrative devices?
>: >
>: > Thanks in advance, HR Greenberg, MD ENDIT
>: >
>: ************************
>: John V. Knapp
>:
>: Professor, Dept. of English      tb0jvk1 at corn.cso.niu.edu
>: Northern Illinois University     http://www.niu.edu/english/jvk/knapp.htm
>: 330 Reavis Hall                  Office Phone: (815) 753-6632
>: Dekalb  60115  USA
>:
>:         To depreciate a Book maliciously, or even wantonly, is
>:         at least a very ill-natured office; and a morose snarling
>:         Critic may, I believe, be suspected to be a bad Man.
>:                 Henry Fielding,  *Tom Jones.*
>:

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